Quest for Justice by Sean Fay Wolfe

lightning strike illuminated the sky, letting Kat and Charlie see the tower as well.
    â€œMaybe it’s a shelter! Or another player’s house!” yelled Charlie.
    â€œMaybe! Let’s go there, because we need to get out of this storm! This lightning is getting dangerous!” screamed Kat over the whistling wind and pounding rain.
    The thunderstorm was beginning to get dangerous, with the bolts extremely frequent now. Once, lightning struck a tree right next to Kat and it caught fire, causing her to give a screech of surprise. Fortunately it was immediately extinguished by the rain.
    As they approached the tower, they noticed that it was actually a pyramid, and that it covered the entire road. Stan was suspicious. Something felt wrong. As he walked closer, his suspicions were confirmed. The entire pyramid was made of stacked blocks of TNT.
    â€œWhy would someone put this here?” asked Kat.
    â€œI don’t know, but I don’t feel safe near it,” replied Stan.
    â€œWhy?” asked Charlie, walking up to the pyramid. “What’s the worst that can happen?”
    As if on cue, the worst thing did happen. Lightning struck the top of the pyramid, and the powder in the block was ignited. It began to flash dangerously.
    â€œRUN!” screamed Stan as the block exploded. As the three players and Rex ran for it, the entire tower exploded from the top down, with each explosion sending lit TNT blocks flying everywhere like lava spewing from a volcano. Luckily, they escaped the range of the explosions with top-speed sprinting. As they gazed at the exploding pyramid it became clear that the explosives were underground, too. They could hear the explosions continue on for about sixty seconds before the tumult finally stopped.
    The rain had died down, so they could talk in normal voices again. There was dust in the air now from the explosion, just like the Creeper explosion in the mine on the way to the Adorian Village. But this explosion was much larger, and it had blown a huge fissure in the middle of the road. They were cut off from the other side.
    â€œThe woods, then?” Stan said in an unnaturally high voice. They looked at each other. They remembered what Sally had said. The Griefers avoid the main road in case they come across well-armed travelers. Straying off the road would lead them directly into enemy territory.
    â€œOh, don’t be ridiculous, we don’t—” started Charlie, but he was cut off by Kat.
    â€œDon’t kid yourself, Charlie. Stan’s right.” They could tell from her trembling lip that Kat was making a determined effort to keep her cool. “Come on,” she said, and she started into the woods, Rex at her heels, growling in a low tone. Charlie made a high-pitched squeal, but he forced himself to follow Stan into the forest.
    It was dark. Stan could barely make out the neon orange of Kat’s shirt. Every now and then, there was another flash of lightning, and Stan could make out a Spider web, a tree trunk, a Zombie lumbering in the distance.
    Suddenly, there was a rustling to Stan’s right. There was something in the underbrush, and it was running straight toward him. “Run!” he yelled, and he started running, hacking branches out of the way with his axe. Kat and Charlie looked confused for a second, but when they heard the rustling they followed suit.
    Stan burst out of the forest and into the light, now on the other side of the giant crater. Kat burst out right after him, closely followed by Rex and Charlie. Stan whipped out his axe and raised it above his head, Kat drew her sword and dropped in a fighting stance, and Charlie held his pickaxe in trembling hands. Then, the thing that had been chasing them burst into the clearing.
    â€œAre you kidding me? You were scared of this little guy?” laughed Kat as she walked up to the pig and stroked it behind the ears, which it seemed to like. Rex came up to the pig and